eugenesis-text

ellipsis and Metroplex would wake up semi-paralysed, or blind, or stupid, or a wide-eyed combination of all
three.
He may have successfully activated the start-up code, flooding the leviathan’s pea-sized brain with
electricity and jolting his sluggish CPU to life, but preparing him for battle was the real challenge; when his
fist shattered the central precinct he had to know where he was and what he had to do.
1:34. Mindwipe kept on screaming.
To the left of the ‘1’ and the right of the ‘:34’, security screens flashed pictures from around the City.
Sallow with fake light, with cheap and borrowed colour, they showed not what was happening above
ground (all those spycams had been destroyed) but what was happening below: torrents of water were
crashing through cracks at the bottom of the moat and filling the underground caverns.
1:25
The base of Level 31, half a mile underground and the lowest point in Autobot City, began to
subside. Titanium slabs were teased and tousled. They left their moorings without argument, spurred by the
earthquakes.
1:11
Mindwipe punched in the final commands, stopped screaming (his vox box was dripping with
overheat) and made for the transmat. Skullcruncher and Triggerhappy had long-since teleported outside.
He did not bother resetting the co-ordinates. Sure, there was a chance he might materialise inside a
steaming mountain of wreckage, but so what Better to die as a ripple of mashed-up molecules and doublespace
than wait for several million tonnes of hardware to fall on top of him… and what was the hell was
that noise Oh. Perhaps he was still screaming.
0:59
The moat water cheated its way inside, splitting in two to outsmart the dumb and crumbling rock. It
begged and burrowed until the worried seam collapsed; the first few red-hot droplets bounced off the nose
of the Ark.
0:57
Mindwipe crouched on the displacement disc while the office warped into marigold and chestnut,
gold and vermilion.
0:26
And… stop.
Ultra Magnus gave up. The wreckage blocking the entrance to the research building refused to be
moved. The only way to reach Wheeljack was through the central precinct, and Metroplex’s imminent
arrival ruled out that route. All he could do was hope that Wheeljack had reached the relative safety of his
workshop, deep inside Metroplex’s bodyshell.
He transformed and thundered across the City, across the craters and the cratered.
0:09
Back in robot mode, he broke into a final sprint and abandoned the City’s inner plateau, leaving
Sharkticon crowds to puzzle over the sudden disappearance of every Autobot within a quarter-mile radius.
0:01
Metroplex was awake.
He was groggy and hung over, but he was awake. Behind his eyes, a ball of wire-wrapped softcircuitry
shivered like a stalled heart, like a hand-pumped cardio-clump filled with test-toxins and gum
from unlabelled bottles. He straddled the divider between dead and alive: only the tracts of scathing
energon inside his brain tipped the balance.
Metroplex was awake, and he was in a very bad mood.
Outside, Ultra Magnus and his men watched Autobot City blur into a clenched fist of gold. Buildings
collapsed and spread themselves thickly over the central precinct. Sharkticons ran for their lives.
Ultra Magnus sensed trouble and looked around. Why was the ground heating up Standing on the
outermost perimeter, they were supposed to be safe. No buckshot or flash-flame; they could crouch here,